[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 51 (Friday, April 19, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H3652-H3653]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               THE BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida [Mr. Scarborough] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Mr. Speaker, there has been so much debate over the 
past 6 months to 1 year over the balanced budget, and the budget 
battle, and Americans have been so swept away with sort of the currents 
of the demagoguery that is coming out of the White House and the debate 
that is going back and forth that we have really lost sight of really 
what has been happening here.
  We have been governing by CR, continuing resolutions, where, since we 
cannot get the President to agree to a balanced budget deal, we go from 
month to month to month. I have been disappointed that we have not been 
able to get a balanced budget and wish that we could have moved 
swifter, wished that we would have had a President that would have 
signed the first balanced budget plan in a generation. But I found out 
something very interesting this past week.
  What I found out was, even governing by CR, we are ahead of schedule 
to balancing the budget. We are further along on that 7-year track to 
balancing the budget than we would have been even if we had passed our 
7-year plan last year. And this is great news. On the front page of 
Investors' Business Daily this morning, had a wonderful quote. The 
quote said that, while Bill Clinton has been winning the PR battle with 
the public, the Republicans have been quietly winning the war. This is 
great news for all of America today.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California [Mr. Baker].
  Mr. BAKER of California. It is good news, and I try and keep this 
fact well hidden, but I am one of the few budget analysts on the floor. 
For 4 years I worked for the department of finance in the State of 
California. If I had had

[[Page H3653]]

a little more personality, I would have become an accountant. But 
studying these figures, what we found out was we cannot change the way 
Washington does business. Over two-thirds of our budget is entitlements 
locked into law. That means an entitlement is when you show up at the 
window and you say, I would like some money, the Government shells it 
out. Until you change those laws, either requiring work from welfare 
recipients or requiring that people be citizens or making these other 
changes in laws, you are going to have the budget on automatic pilot.
  Where we have made the improvements is in the discretionary funds, 
that small area outside of defense and outside of the entitlement areas 
where we can change. But there is only so much longer you can squeeze 
the parts in the other areas of the budget to make them efficient. It 
would be like asking IBM to get all of their salary savings out of the 
clerical help and not to do it out of the executives or any of the 
sales force. So IBM has to have a more balanced view as they try and 
downsize their corporate structure in order to make themselves 
profitable.
  We in Government have to do the same thing. We have to change the 
entitlement process to make sure those people who receive a Government 
check are actually in need. That is what our welfare reform is about, 
and that is what all of the changes in immigration are about.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot of discussion, 
especially during the presidential campaigns that Americans do not care 
about balancing the budget, Americans have moved their attention to 
something else. I can tell you that I got elected and the majority of 
the 73 freshmen, Republican freshmen got elected in 1994 because we 
promised first and foremost to balance the budget.
  Social issues aside, all this other stuff aside, we said we were 
going to spend only as much money as we take in. We are going to 
balance the budget. I am still hearing Americans tell me, at the 75 
townhall meetings I have held over the past year and a half, they are 
still saying the same thing: Balance the budget, get Washington's 
business in order and you guys live by the same rules that we have to 
live by across the country. So this is great news.
  Mr. BAKER of California. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield for 
one more thought, that is this is not even partisan. The demographics 
are what are crushing us. When the baby boomers, people younger than 
me, even, retire, 37 million people are going to stop paying 16 percent 
to Social Security and welfare and SDI, and they are going to start 
receiving.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Right.
  Mr. BAKER of California. The ship goes upside down. This is not 
debate over whether we want to balance or whether we want to stop 
living off our grandkids.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Sure.
  Mr. BAKER of California. By 2010 it is over. We have 14 to 16 years 
to straighten this out. While the others drag their feet, my own 
Senator ran ads saying, I will vote for the balanced budget, vote for 
me. She got here and reneged. It was the one vote that killed the 
balanced budget amendment.
  We do not have the luxury any longer to debate whether. It is when 
and how, and those are tough decisions. I have projects in my district 
that I would like to see expanded, too, but we are going to have to 
suck it up, take our medicine and balance this budget. I appreciate the 
gentleman bringing up the point.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Reclaiming my time, you said something very 
important. This is not an ideological issue. If the environment is 
important to you, if you think we need to fund environmental cleanups, 
if somebody thinks that welfare is poverty to them, if somebody thinks 
Social Security is important, defense, it does not matter what the 
issue is.

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